The Fiery Arrow

by Bo Burnette

  He glared beneath lowered brows, then addressed Erik. “Come, help me push. I think it will go down now.”

  They shoved against the trunk, and the base of the tree crackled and swayed. Philip’s sword had carved through a massive swath of wood. And, as they pushed and strained, Arliss saw that her plan just might work.

  “Arliss, help. Now.”

  Philip’s breathless, curt demand left her with no response but to obey. She squeezed into the gap between them and braced her hands against the tree trunk, shoving with every scrap of her strength. After many long, excruciating moments, wood crackled as if in a roaring fire.

  His face blood red and his neck tense as a bowstring, Philip struggled with the massive log as he tried to slow its fall. It came slamming down on the opposite bank, right at the base of the other dark tree which she had seen.

  Erik mounted the newly felled bridge with a catlike agility. “If your mind is set upon this foolishness, then let us do it quickly.”

  Arliss swallowed and knelt down, securing all her belongings.

  “This is ridiculous,” Ilayda huffed as Philip offered his hand to help her onto the log. “I don't think any discoveries or whatnot are worth this foolishness.”

  “You can stop talking about me behind my back,” Arliss said. “I can hear you.”

  “We’re not behind your back,” Ilayda quipped. “We’re in front of you.”

  Arliss pursed her lips and tightened the strap of her quiver about her waist, mimicking Erik’s methods. Her bow she strung and slipped over her head, letting the string tighten across her chest. Making sure the leather satchel was latched tightly, she walked over to the makeshift bridge and took a deep breath.

  Philip hesitated before offering a hand dingy with scrapings of tree bark and moss. She stared at it for several long moments. The temptation to refuse him was strong. Utter dislike and resentment for his harsh words rose up inside her chest and demanded that she rebuff him.

  Yet, for all her misanthropic feelings at that moment, she remembered the inexplicable connection she had felt the moment she first saw him. She turned her gaze from his dirty hand to his pure, colorful eyes.

  She grasped his hand and allowed him to pull her onto the log.

  Philip stepped up onto the narrow bridge, placing one foot in front of the other, in an exaggerated swordsman’s stance. Ahead, Erik led the way, glancing over his shoulder at them every few moments. Ilayda treaded a few paces behind him.

  Moss and black debris glazed the entire tree, and Philip nearly slipped more than once. He had to stay focused. Step, step, one foot, another foot. Beneath the log, the river roared angrily on its course south. One misstep and any member of the company could be washed away.

  He stared at the log beneath his boots. If they made it across, what then? What really lay deep in the woods in the heart of the country—the heart that Arliss so wanted to find?

  Ilayda gasped sharply, startling Philip’s focused movements. Erik reached back to steady her, his movements slow and stiff.

  “Do you need help?”

  Ilayda snorted. “I can walk across a log by myself, thank you.”

  Erik called back. “Why, again, is this forbidden, Arliss?”

  “Because my father is a fearful fool. That’s all I wish to say,” Arliss snapped.

  Philip narrowed an eye at her. What secret was she hiding beneath all these brusque answers?

  "Look." She pointed at something, her sapphire eyes focused and fearful.

  Philip followed her motion to the opposite bank and the dark tree which lay directly at the end of their log bridge. The felled log had smashed into the base of the other tree, and now the upright tree wobbled precariously. If it fell, it would surely break their bridge, if not crush them all into the river.

  They had only made it halfway across.

  “Hurry, Erik, please,” Arliss commanded.

  Erik stretched his steps.

  Ilayda’s breaths sounded short and halting, and Arliss knew she was terrified. With her hands stretched out on either side, she focused on her own balance. Ilayda could fend for herself.

  Philip’s voice jutted in behind her. “We’re not going to make it in time.”

  “Shut up, and just try!” Arliss snapped.

  Philip tottered closer to her, sidestepping clots of feathery moss and brown lichen. “Princess, I know you’re still angry with me, and I know why. But you have to stop. If we are going to succeed at this thing, we need to be together.”

  “It seems like we are going to be together, so to speak, whether I want to be or not.”

  “I thought it was you who sought me out—wanted me as your guide?”

  “Well, that was my mistake!”

  “You really wanted someone to tell you that everything you do is right? Someone who obeys your every command?” He stepped closer, grabbing her arms.

  Were he not holding her, she could fall at any moment, yet she shouted, “Let me go!”

  “I don’t feel inclined to obey your every whim at the moment, Arliss.” He smirked, then whispered, “I am not Ilayda.”

  Unable to contain herself any longer, she burst into laughter.

  Erik whirled around—as much as he could on the slippery log. “Arliss, Philip—focus! Please!” He and Ilayda had doubled the distance between themselves and the other two and had almost reached the other side.

  “We can make it!” Arliss stepped away from Philip.

  A massive crackling interrupted her words, thoughts, and steps. On the other bank, the tree had been slowly weakening, and now the blackened trunk began to fall, its base popping and snapping. Erik and Ilayda made a last attempt to cross, running and leaping towards the opposite shore.

  “Arliss, quick. Tie that rope in your satchel to an arrow,” Philip ordered.

  Arliss wanted to argue, to defy his command. Instead, she did as he demanded, tying a knot around the arrow with trembling fingers. Ahead of them, Erik pulled Ilayda onto the shore just before the tree tilted several more feet.

  “Arliss…” Philip’s voice jolted.

  “I’m trying!” She jerked the knot tight and nocked the arrow with shaking hands. “What now?”

  “Shoot that huge tree near the shore.”

  “The one on the left?” She took aim.

  “That one—hurry! Now!”

  She pulled the arrow back as far as she could. It flew into the tree, embedding the shaft halfway into the bark. Suddenly, she felt his arms around her waist. He cinched the loop he had made with the other end of the rope, and steadied her now as the log bridge buckled under the bending tree.

  “Philip!” Erik called.

  “The rope, Erik!” Philip yelled back.

  Erik ran to the arrow.

  In an instant, the dark tree’s base snapped and toppled over into the river. Arliss winced, preparing to be crushed.

  Philip pulled her back several feet, just before the tree slammed into the bridge and split it in two.

  “Jump!” he shouted, and they hurled themselves onto the split half of the log.

  The strike of the wood and the chill of the river knocked out her breath for a moment.

  Philip held onto the rope with both hands. Yet nothing was holding him to the log. The rope started to skid his body off the trunk.

  Gasping for air, Arliss reached over and grabbed his ankle with one hand, wrapping her other arm around the log. The bark dug into her side as she hooked her arm tighter.

  On the shore, Erik tugged at the rope, pulling against the flow of the river. The log which held Arliss and Philip wavered in the coursing waters, drifting back and forth, closer and closer to the shore.

  Philip took the chance. He wrapped his arm around Arliss and tumbled off the log. They landed half on the shore and half in the water. Their legs were drenched, but they had made it.

  Arliss lay there gasping for a while with Philip’s arm still draped about her back. She dragged herself onto the shore and stood.

>   Philip sat up in the muddy sand and hid his hands behind his back. “Aren’t you missing something?”

  She tossed her soaked hair. “What could I possibly be missing?”

  “Check your quiver.”

  Her arrows—gone. No. It couldn’t be. She fumbled at her side, stuffed her hand into the stiff leather. Empty. “No—no! But…”

  He brandished three arrows for her to see. “I managed to save a few.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE: LASAIRBLÁTH

  Arliss wrung out her dripping golden hair. The bottom of her blue woolen dress stuck to her skin, so she strode around for several paces, trying to dry out. It helped nothing.

  She leaned against a gnarled trunk, one of the only trees in the vicinity that showed no signs of poison—of darkness. The darkness permeated this side of the river, stretching as far into the woods as she could see. Had her father been right to forbid this passage?

  No. No matter what had happened here in the past, it had gone. Surely no evil of consequence lurked here.

  Something crunched beneath her feet. She looked down and saw what she had stepped on: a thin, translucent piece of papery material. It seemed to be a fragment torn from something larger, something strange and unfamiliar.

  “What are we to do now?” Erik’s question drew her attention away from the crackling item.

  “Continue on the quest, of course.”

  “Arliss, are you mad?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  He huffed. “You cannot be serious. All this, and you’re still insisting we go on?”

  “I wouldn’t call a bumpy trip across the river ‘all this.’ Just a mere interruption.”

  “Are you so blind?” He pointed into the depths of the woods. “To go into there?”

  “Are you so afraid?”

  “I am not a fool.” Erik’s lower lip pursed.

  “Good,” she snapped. “Then you will do as you are told.”

  Ilayda moved towards her. “You have to quit talking to all of us like we’re children! We’re your companions, not your students.”

  “You’re my subjects, are you not?”

  Philip shook his head. “You sound just like your father.”

  “Silence!” She turned on him, his brave rescue quickly slipping from her mind. “I sound nothing like that fool.”

  Ilayda gasped. Philip, for once, looked almost wounded by her outburst.

  Arliss hesitated. Had she truly hurt him in what she had said? But no, she had neither time nor patience to care. He would learn not to be so brash in his words. “We move on until sundown.”

  So she turned into the darkness and walked on, not caring whether they followed her, and forgetting all about the strange item upon which she had stepped.

  The day was growing old, nearing dinnertime. They would need to stop soon. Arliss’s legs were beginning to complain about the many long miles of walking.

  “We need to stop and get some victuals soon,” she commented to Erik.

  “A very perspicacious thought, princess.” He stared straight ahead. “But not here. I don’t like the look of this place.”

  His uneasiness was not unfounded. All around them, the dark trees towered, and the ground lay streaked with brownish moss. The woods permitted no view of an end anywhere in sight.

  “It’s not going to get much better, though.” She sighed and continued dragging her feet along. What if the forest went on forever? Or at least for many days and weeks? How would she ever know, and how could they be certain of their way home?

  What if they walked right past the heart of Reinhold and never knew?

  Philip began singing in a soft, clear voice like a mountain stream, quieting her fears:

  A princess on a carven throne

  Clothed in simple raiment

  A queenly look is in her eye

  And grace is on her forehead

  A princess on a smooth-hewn throne

  Clothed in linen raiment

  A queenly look is in her eye

  And grace is on her forehead

  A princess on a gilded throne

  Clothed in silken raiment

  A queenly look is in her eye

  And grace is on her forehead.

  Arliss stared at him. “That song! Where did you learn it?”

  “My mother had a book of songs passed down through the ages by our people and others. I learned many of them. Eventually I gave the book to the castle’s library, like so many others.”

  “Then you can read music?”

  “I can follow along decently well.”

  She smiled. “I play the fiddle—my mother taught me.”

  “Really?” His eyes brightened. “I’ve always been curious about instruments. Do you think—”

  Erik stopped them in their tracks with a downward wave of his hand. His voice dropped low as he spoke. “We have to leave now, by whatever means possible.”

  “What’s wrong?” Arliss’s pulse quickened.

  “We’re in grave danger,” Erik whispered. “I found something on the ground over there.”

  He held something thin and papery, like the thing Arliss had stepped on, yet this one had not been torn. The entire ugly thing lay one and whole in Erik’s hands. Philip peered at it in confusion, but Arliss recognized it with a sickening knowledge. This was the one thing which plagued her when she read books of forests and creatures, and the one thing which the first explorers of this land had feared, according to the book which was even now in her satchel.

  Now, right in front of her face, Erik held the long, papery sloughing.

  A snakeskin.

  Her heart throbbed with unusual, almost frantic, intensity. A sick feeling of collywobbles rose up in her stomach, and she gripped Philip’s arm for support.

  He glanced at her distress, his brow knit with concern. “Are you well?”

  She nodded. “Just fine. We must get back across the river…find another way in.”

  “There are no other ways, not unless you want to go all the way north and around the mountains. They’re as sheer as sheets and well nigh impassable,” Erik said. “Even here in the forest you’ll eventually come to their rocky roots, and who knows if those, too, cannot be crossed?”

  “Then we must—”

  Behind her, Ilayda released a high shriek of terror.

  “Don’t move!” Arliss nocked an arrow as she hurried into the forest, toward her friend’s voice. “I’m coming!”

  Behind her, Erik and Philip unsheathed their swords and followed her, their feet crunching leaves and twigs. She clambered out into a clearing which seemed to materialize around her. Dark trees were clustered in edges round the clearing’s border.

  Ilayda trembled on the forest floor, her deep hair tangled, her purple dress quivering on her shaking shoulders.

  Inches away from her, an incredibly long serpent undulated its girth toward Ilayda, its forked tongue flickering like a flame. The striped spirals oozed their way across fallen leaves.

  The snake coiled up for a strike. Ilayda screamed again.

  Arliss’s arrow pierced through the coils, stabbing through the vile creature’s head and pinning its corkscrewed body to the ground. It writhed and wriggled for many moments after the killing.

  Wasting no time, Arliss gripped Ilayda’s shaking hand with her own unsteady one and hoisted her to her feet. Erik and Philip burst into the clearing at that very moment.

  “Arliss!” Philip shouted. He must have been shouting for her as he ran. His face was written in letters of worry and apprehension—but no fear. How did he even have the nerve to keep his sword upright?

  The sun—or what she could see of it—had begun to set. The light in the forest dimmed and reddened. Soon it would be too dark to go on.

  “Now we must go back.” Erik nodded at the dead snake on the ground.

  As if at his words, a dozen more snakes slithered from behind trees and blocked their path back to the river.

  Arliss held her tongue and willed
Ilayda to do the same. This wasn’t a time for jabbering.

  The four companions backed nearer to each other as the snakes slithered around the edge of the clearing as if it were a bordered realm or a walled fortress. Arliss could sense the tension emanating from Philip’s taut body. The knuckles around his sword seemed white as…

  …as the white patch of light which shone deep in the forest almost beyond her sight. She had not noticed it until now. What could it be? It was too white for a torch or campfire. Whatever it was, it was light and not darkness. They had to make it to the whiteness if possible.

  It certainly did not appear to be a possibility at the present. The serpents neared every moment. Even now Arliss could see the intricate stripes on their backs, the hideously dark eyes. Never had she seen such unnaturally dark and evil creatures attack and move with such order.

  Philip’s whisper was hoarse. “What is your plan, princess?”

  He’d been using her given name earlier. Why had he suddenly turned cold and formal? She hissed, “Surely you or Erik one must have a splendid idea.”

  “Please, princess,” Philip said. “Think.”

  “All right. I see a light over there, in the opposite direction of the river.”

  “You mean go deeper in?” Erik put in with an angry whisper.

  “Bloody yes, I do,” Arliss retorted.

  Philip took a breath and a hesitant step. “We move slowly. Have your weapons ready.”

  Arliss’s every step was excruciating. She tried not to look at the snakes and hoped they were not looking at her. For whatever reason, the creatures lay still as corpses.

  She breathed, stepped, breathed, stepped, as if she walked on thin glass. An ominous stillness ruled in the dark glade. Philip breathed heavily beside her.

  Then, at the clearing’s boundary a snake at the closest edge of the serpentine ring coiled up and hurled itself at Philip. Ilayda shrieked. Philip slashed his sword and hacked the creature in two. Black blood spurted from its dismembered form.